Rosanne Greco is chairwoman of the South Burlington City Council. / MADDIE MCGARVEY/FREE PRESS

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

Related Links

SOUTH BURLINGTON — Council Chairwoman Rosanne Greco received an email Tuesday night after her remarks about the election were published online by the Free Press. “You need to leave this city,” the writer said.

Greco said she’s received a number of similar messages and unpleasant anonymous phone calls, some late at night.

The messages, she said, have a common theme: She should be ashamed of herself; she should resign from the council; she should leave South Burlington.

She also received a string of favorable emails lamenting the loss and praising Greco and the old council for its work on interim zoning, the opening of boards and committees to new faces and for making the F-35 deployment into a major issue.

Tuesday, as the election results became clear, Greco offered her opinion: “The good old boys are back,” she told the Free Press. “Prepare yourself for paving over paradise in the Southeast Quadrant. Strip Malls as far as the eye can see. We will look like New Jersey. That’s what the voters of South Burlington want, apparently.”

Since Tuesday’s voting, the messages have begun.

“To receive that kind of nastiness makes me understand why people are reluctant to go into public service and why people are reluctant to speak out,” she said.

She said she has learned to hang up after the first few unpleasant words and to delete the emails from her computer. She said she read only “a couple” of the negative comments directed at her on the Free Press website.

“If I don’t say anything now,” she said, “it worked. It shut her up. If it worked with me, then the next person, ‘Hey, it worked with Greco. We can shut up anyone by being abusive.’”

“The truth always needs to come out,” she said, “even if it’s putting me at risk. I don’t think the average person would know this happens, unless I talk about it.”

Greco said she has no objection to individuals disagreeing with her, about the F-35, about development versus preservation, or about any other topic.

(Page 2 of 2)

She said she now thinks her sense of Vermont prior to moving here was “naive,” a Norman Rockwell pastoral that doesn’t exist in reality.

She said she and her husband chose Vermont for retirement after living during her military career in “five or six countries and over 25 cities.”

“I’ve seen how people treat each other in other places,” she said. “When we chose Vermont, it was because I thought Vermont was different and Vermonters were different, connected by the smallness of the state, ... that they behaved like friendly neighbors. I remember seeing pictures as a little girl, a paradise for an environment and people who are engaged and town meetings where people come together and talk about things and debate. I thought I was coming to a place where people value those kinds of things, and a liberal attitude, respectful of other people’s views.”

“So,” she continued, “it’s personally disheartening to receive the kind of ugly comments I have gotten from Vermonters.”

She said she didn’t turn away from a fight during her years in the Air Force and doesn’t plan to now. “I’m not a Milquetoast,” she said. “You don’t get to be a colonel by being a Milquetoast. I plan to keep speaking out. I will absolutely continue to speak out for those people (without power) and for the silent majority. We didn’t hear from them. I will continue to vote with those values in mind. I will most likely be outvoted, but that won’t stop me from speaking out.”